Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou stressed?on Wednesday that his government is " ready to turn a page" and "ready to curb the deficits considerably, " while placing at the same time the country on a course of growth.

However, the prime minister also warned: "We do not want to be a lightning rod for whatever profiteers who do not permit us to deal with the program that the Europeans and we want to implement. "

Addressing an informal cabinet session on Wednesday afternoon, the prime minister briefed the council on his contacts in Paris and Brussels that were concluded with a joint declaration of political support for Greece by the 27 heads of state and government from EU countries.

"We are not asking for money from others, we are not asking for money from Germans, Italians, French or whatever other taxpayers. We are asking for the necessary time to enable us to implement our program which will secure for the country the credibility and the possibility to borrow with regular terms," Papandreou stressed.

The prime minister also pointed out that "we want a serious evaluation of the existing stability, growth and reconstruction program and not general and irresponsible talk of measures on what Greece needs and what not."

"We are asking for support so that the easiness of profiteering and the degradation of the country with secret aims or not will stop," he said, adding that the problem is not exclusively Greek but a wider European one.

The prime minister said that Greece "is receiving blows continuously due to unreliability," and that the committee of independent experts from the government highlighted the size of the cover-up of the deficit last year, as well as the size of the political problem that it created.

Papandreou underlined that "we want the country's new page to be built in the light and in truth and in addition that consensus required must be based on a state of law and not the concealment of the truth."